Whatya do with 35 pounds of Russian Boar Fat Trimmings? By Ed Hale |

I was just amazed at the quantity and quality of fat from my very hairy Russian Boar.

Of course I have boasted about the quality of meat a bit, but here I could have just thrown that beautiful fat in the trash as a byproduct of the butchering process.

That is not me, I love to experiment! Accordingly, I read up on the rendering process and what I could do with the resultant lard. For the record, the fat does not smell much, the wet rendering process creates little odor in the kitchen that my wife was concerned about. “Wet rendering” is a hot water bath in a large pot that renders (pulls the fat as a liquid) the fat so that as the fat melts, it will not burn.

Below are 2 pots that have slowly heated water, beginning the process. Some folks, I did not think of it, will put the fat through a meat grinder which speeds up the rendering process significantly. I turned the stove vent on low to ensure little odor.

The next best thing was to cut up the fat in the pot with scissors.

After 3 hours, the fat was somewhat liquified at a temperature of 275ºF measured with my candy thermometer.

I could tell when the water which boils at 212 F was gone because the temperature of the liquid rose slowly above 212 to the 275 mark. I was patient to heat the fat slowly over my natural gas stove so I did not burn it.

Here I am pouring the fat into wide mouth canning jars.

After cooling for several hours the fat now called Lard has solidified and off to the freezer. The lard is good enough for making fine pastry dough or for frying foods such as chicken, fish, seafood, french fries or even to make donuts or fried dough. The good fats in this lard are abundant but like everything, moderation is key.

Below is a neat article suggesting that Lard is the new health food. It is a fun read or the saturated-fat-healthy article below that.

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/lard-the-new-health-food

http://greatist.com/health/saturated-fat-healthy

So don’t throw out that fat, render it. I now give a tiny bit to my dogs in their food. They love it. I can’t wait to fry with it too.

Here is the fat in my freezer below. I did not mention the left over fat solids are called crackle and can be used in salads etc. I have yet to use the crackle but saved some for a later use.